Family Issues
by Moczo
Summary: For years, the similarities between Lutecia Alphine and Servant Rider have been noted, and for years they have left the masses confused. Now... now, an explanation has finally been found. It involves, as all great explanations do, vodka. Lots of vodka. (Co-written with RadiantBeam)


**Author's Note: Beams and I... 'wrote' this. We don't know what this is, or how we made it. We just know that it's kind of horrible. Maybe the worst thing either of us has ever written. **

**And that we didn't stop laughing the whole time.**

**Technically speaking, this is a Fate/Stay Night - Nanoha crossover, with a tiiiiiiny bit of 'High School of the Dead'. Less technically, it's just _weird_.**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

Lutecia Alphine sat in the hospital waiting room, her hands bound in front of her and an armed guard on either side.

Despite her small stature and youth, she was being treated with this level of caution because she was, above all else, a dangerous criminal in the eyes of the government. While her involvement had been minimal in comparison to some, Lutecia had been a player in what the news networks were already dubbing the 'JS Incident', a series of thefts and terrorist attacks made against the ruling body of the Time-Space Administration Bureau, at the behest of the power-mad lunatic Jail Scaglietti.

She was, however, being given some leeway in her sentencing. Part of this was, again, due to her youth. Part was due to her comparatively small involvement in the more violent aspects of the affair. And yet more due to her cooperation with authorities after her capture. But mostly, it was due to the circumstances of her involvement. While some of the individuals she had worked with had sought power, some revenge, some the sheer thrill of the battles it had spawned, Lutecia had only ever wanted one thing:

Jail had promised to give her back her mother.

He had lied to her, in the end, she knew that. The TSAB's medical experts were, mere days after her recovery, already bringing her mother out of her coma. If it was so simple, then Jail could have done it at any time, and his claim to need the stolen technology that Lu had acquired for him had been nothing more than bait to keep her dancing to his tune. But at the moment, Lutecia simply could not care. Any moment now, those doors would open, and...

The lit sign over the operating room doors clicked from 'occupied' to 'free'. Lutecia felt her heart rise up into her throat.

She didn't know what to say. Her mother had been taken from her when she'd only been two years old; she barely remembered the woman herself, and had only been driven by the sensation of not knowing what she had truly lost. But now the time was here. Megane was awake again, and they could talk for the first time in eight years.

But what did she say? _"Hello, Mother, I'm a convicted criminal?"  
_  
… Worst came to worst, it was a start.

Lutecia was snapped out of her thoughts by a gentle nudge from the guard standing to her right, and with a sigh she took the gesture for what it was and got to her feet. They'd promised to unbind her hands once she was in the room so she could talk to her mother freely, but until then she would have to accept her hands being tied and being herded around between two grown, fully armed guards.

Still, she was just a child, and that was why as they stepped through the doors one of her guards gave her his idea of a reassuring smile. "It'll be okay," he said.

Lutecia blinked, not entirely sure how to react to that small act of kindness, and never having a chance to; her guard snapped back to duty, and when she looked up her first sight was of a groggily blinking Megane Alphine, the older woman rubbing at her eyes, glancing around in confusion as her senses returned to her.

Her heart flew into her throat. "Mother?"

Megane blinked a few times, apparently not sure if she was hearing what she thought she was hearing. Lutecia couldn't exactly blame her; she had been taken when Lu was only two years old. She was probably shocked to see her little baby had grown so old. "I... excuse me? Do I know you?"

"It's... it's me. It's Lutecia," Lu said, her voice quavering, tears welling up in her eyes. "Your... your daughter."

Megane just blinked again. "... I'm... sorry? I don't _have _a daughter..."

Lutecia's heart began to hammer in her chest, panic filling her eyes. "Wh-what? Mother, I know it's been a long time, and I don't look the same, but I'm your Lulu! You were taken when I was two years old! I... I've been searching for you all this time, mother!"

"Um... no, you're not quite getting it," Megane said. "It's not that you don't 'look like my daughter'. It's that I, um... well, never _had _one. At all. I mean, if I had a two-year old daughter and had nobody reliable to leave her with when I went on missions, I would have transferred to a desk job where I would be safe to raise a family. I'm not a monster."

Lutecia pondered this. It sounded... ouch, painfully logical. "But... well. I mean... I was told when I started my search that Megane Alphine _was _my mother! I have spent _years _looking for you!"

Megane considered this. "Well... are you completely sure that the person who told you this was trustworthy?"

Lutecia fell very, painfully silent for several long, long minutes, the mad smile and slightly unfocused eyes of Jail popping into her mind.

"Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffff fffffffffffffffffffff ffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuu-"

"Language, young lady. This is a hospital," Megane said primly.

"I'm sorry, but this has kind of ruined my life mothe- miss," Lutecia said, with a bit more energy than she typically showed. The building fury was making her a bit more emotional than she'd been these last eight totally goddamn wasted years. "Because I was an _idiot _and believed a man who, in retrospect, literally has not stopped smirking in the last decade, I have spent the majority of my life trying to save a total stranger while my real mother is... probably off being dead somewhere! Ugh! You know, this is just my luck. I can't even hit him anymore, since he's in prison. You'd think that at least Zest could have _mentioned _that his own subordinate didn't have a daughter..."

"Oh, you knew Zest? Maybe you were his daughter," Megane suggested brightly. "I mean, he totally had a thing for purple-haired women. Why do you think he managed to recruit me _and_Quint? Man had Violet Fever. I bet you take after your mother, and he 'took after' your mother too. If you know what I mean."

"... I'm ten."

"Oh, right. Innuendo maybe not the best thing here. Well, what I was trying to suggest is that maybe whoever told you to help me was passing me off as your mother because I _look _like her," Megane said.

"… What."

* * *

Rider sneezed.

This was quite unusual for several reasons. First and foremost, it was the middle of winter in Fuyuki City. Anything that could have made her sneeze was already long dead and buried under the ice and snow, and thanks to the whole Servant issue she'd never had to deal with allergies in the first place. Second of all, despite Sakura's general love of flowers (and pink things) after being released from Zouken, she had never brought in anything particularly agitating.

Third, well, it was really _odd _for Rider to sneeze. She so rarely did it that often times everyone seemed to forget she even could.

Sniffling, the lilac-haired Servant wiped at her nose and tried to get back into the book she'd been reading. She normally enjoyed shamelessly steamy romance novels, but today she had a hard time focusing on the plot and the characters. She had the deep, nagging sensation that she had forgotten about something. Something _extremely _important.

Something, in fact, that maybe she should have thought about far before this point.

Then again, Rider wasn't very good at keeping track of things that didn't immediately occur around her.

"Hey, Sakura?" she asked, looking up from her book. Her Master was snuggled up in a blanket on the couch idly flipping through a magazine, while her sister, Rin, whom she had only recently reconciled with, seemed to be doing her best to take a nap.

"Yes, Rider?"

"Do you ever get the feeling that you've forgotten something important, but you're not sure what?"

"Oh, sometimes," Sakura said with a small giggle. "Like, once, I was worried all day and couldn't be sure why! In the end, it turned out that I had forgotten to give senpai his birthday present! And of course he was too nice to bring it up, so I ended up not getting it to him until almost a week after his birthday! Oh, silly me."

"Right, it's like that!" Rider said, smiling. "I'm having a moment like that. Maybe we're out of milk? We might be out of milk."

"Hee hee! Well, it does run out so fast, doesn't it? Perhaps we can go get some more later today, I'm too toasty to move right now."

Rider nodded. "Yeah, okay. I mean, it's either that, or ten years ago I had sex with an alien wizard."

For a long time, the only sound in the room was the gentle clanking of pots and pans from the kitchen as Shirou made dinner for them all.

"Um. Rider," Sakura said, and even Rin was no longer trying especially hard to ignore the conversation at this point. "Could you maybe repeat that?"

"Well, I _think _he was an alien. He had a magical space-ship," Rider said idly. "I think. I'm not going to lie, I'd had a few drinks while we were chatting in the bar, and next thing I know I'm on his spaceship. And, y'know, we're going at it because... well, I mean, come on. Man with a spaceship, that's a catch. And that's when he's like, 'Oh God, I don't have any magical space-condoms', and of course I'm like, 'space-condoms are for pansies' because I am _wasted _at this point. Vodka's a Hell of a drink. So we go at it, and then I wake up and on I'm on an alien world that looks mostly like Earth except everyone has weird hair."

The silence was basically a void this time.

Shirou poked his head into the room and said, "Hey, does anyone want soup with dinner?"

"Ask again later, Emiya," Rin said in a dull voice.

"Kay!"

"Rider," Sakura said. "Um... not to sound mean. But are you making all this up because you've gone insane?"

"Eh? No, no," Rider said. "I totally remember this. I know because I spent a few months barhopping while I was there, and they had some _great _alien liquors."

"... so... so you forgot about this?" Rin asked.

"Not about this. But I think maybe I forgot _something _about it. Since I mean, I obviously made my way back here eventually. Space-hitchhiking. And they dropped me off, so I hung around for a few years until I heard Sakura had an opening for a Servant. So I sent in my résumé and ended up with you. But I've always wondered if maybe I left _something _behind there, or met someone I promised to hook up with at a hotel there after drinks, I dunno. It's nagging at me, is all."

"Sent in a résumé...?" Rin muttered. "What the..."

"Waaaaaaait," Sakura said. "You mentioned something about space condoms?"

"Ooooooooooooh, damn, that's right!" Rider said, her tone one of mild embarrassment. "I had a kid. Silly me, letting that slip my mind."

"... _slip your mind?!" _Sakura squeaked.

"Oh, like you've never gotten knocked up by a stranger, gone on a nine-month bender, and left your kid behind at the space-orphanage while you hitchhiked back to Earth," Rider said, rolling her eyes.

"_No! No, I haven't!" _Sakura shrieked. "_Nee-san?!"  
_  
"I... I forgot to turn off the air conditioner when Winter started once..." Rin said.

"_Nee-san also has not done that!" _Sakura finished for her.

Rider blinked. "Huh. Just me, then?"

"_Yes! Just you!_"

"Well, in my defense, that was like, only the third time it happened," Rider said.

"... what."

"With an alien. Third time it happened with an _alien_," Rider elaborated. "Hee hee, almost screwed that up."

"… You've done this more than once," Sakura said. Rin seemed to have shut down somewhere after 'only', though it was honestly hard to tell if she had fallen asleep with her eyes open or had slipped into a shock induced coma.

"More than once?" Rider shrugged. "I've done it so many times I lost count."

"So… so many…"

"Alcohol was often involved. _Lots _of alcohol. So much alcohol, you have no idea."

Had Rin's mental capacities been up to date, she may have been taking note of the things that made Rider weak to sexual advances. As it was, her mind still seemed to be checked out for the moment and knowing how well the girl handled even the _talk _of sex, she probably wouldn't have gotten very far with the plan anyway.

"… Let me get this straight," Sakura said, trying very hard to be _positive _about this. "You've gone out."

"Yes."

"You've gotten drunk."

"So drunk, let me tell you."

"You've gone out, and gotten drunk. And then you have sex."

"That's always the best part."

"And space condoms are for pansies."

"That's where you're wrong!" Rider sounded all too cheerful as she spoke. "I think condoms _in general _are for pansies."

"In general," Sakura whimpered.

"Mmm! In the cases where I'm sober enough to think about them, anyway."

"…."

"I admit, I'm not always sober enough to think about them."

"Rider." Sakura sounded very, very pained.

"Yes?"

"Is it… _possible_… that you may have more than one child?"

"…. Do I have to answer that honestly?" Rider asked.

"RIDER!"

"Fine! I traveled back in time once…"

"You _what_."

Shirou chose that particular moment to poke his head back out from the kitchen, golden eyes curious and utterly innocent to the discussion that was currently taking place. "If you don't want soup for dinner, I also made salad."

_"Not the time, Senpai!" _Sakura shrieked.

"… Right. Forgot you don't like salad. Sorry, Sakura." Shirou disappeared back into the kitchen.

"Rider. I have to point something out here," Sakura said. "That is _completely _insane."

"Yeah, you're right," Rider admitted.

"See? I knew that it couldn't have hap-"

"It was actually like, a lot of times," Rider said. "Time travel is like, a weekend thing to me."

"... _how?!"  
_  
"Vodka is a _Hell _of a drink," Rider said.

"Are you suggesting you got _so drunk _that you travelled through _time_."

"What? You didn't question it when I got so drunk I travelled through space," Rider said in an aggrieved tone.

"_Yes I did!_"

"Oh, right. Well, it went like this. You're at the bar, talking up some guy, and he starts talking about his time machine, so you decide to go and have a quickie in it..."

"_How are those two thoughts connected?!_"

"Come on, Sakura. He had a _Time Machine_. What was I supposed to do, _not _go have sex in it?"

"_YES!"  
_  
"... huh. Well, in my defense, I was _so _hammered at the time."

"Fine, so... so you went to have... random sex in a time machine," Sakura growled.

"Is this some kind of nightmare? Or did I die...?" Rin asked nobody in particular.

"And... then?"

"Well, I'm upside down and facing backwards between my legs, when my ankle bumps this lever on the roof of the time machine," Rider said.

"... Whoa," Rin and Sakura said in unison. There are some things you just can't respond to with logical words.

"And next thing I know? Going back through time. And I figure, I have a good buzz going, might as well go out and see what I can see. Maybe get my hands on some good vintages before they_were _good. And on one of my trips, I meet this _really _cute guy. Great eyes. Like... like chips of ice. Sexiest goatee imaginable. Dressed in these awesome old-fashioned aristocrat clothes that would have looked silly on most dudes but looked hot on him. And I see he's got a wedding ring, but I'm hammered so I'm like, '_damn, _I need to hit that _right now'.  
_  
Rin's eyes widened in abject, boundless horror.

Sakura looked back and forth between her sister and her Servant. "I am missing something. Something I do not want to know."

"This... this really sounds like..." Rin whispered.

"Yeah," Rider said wistfully. "Your dad was _fine _back in the day."

Rin and Sakura's heads tilted to one side. Then to the other. Then back. Both of them opened and closed their mouths a few times.

"Rider... are you trying to tell us... that you are our _mother,_" Sakura said, her tone remarkably calm, in the same way that the center of a hurricane is calm.

"Eh? Oh, no, no," Rider said. "I only managed to get Tokiomi in the sack once... I think. I mean, I was preeeeeetty hammered..."

"That seems to be a theme, yes," Sakura muttered.

"But I'm reasonably sure that I'm only _Sakura's _mother," Rider said cheerfully. "I mean, the purple hair? Dead giveaway."

"But wait, I didn't have purple hair when I was born..."

"Oh, purpleness is recessive," Rider said dismissively. "I'm sure it just came out because of all the magic. Like mother, like daughter!"

"Oh, thank Christ," Rin said, the knowledge that she had not been crushing on her mother for the last several months giving her something like relief.

"Now, Rin, I'm only_ your_grandmother," Rider continued.

"... ... ..." Rin said, as the relief withered and died, to be replaced by a horror darker than the blackest pits of space.

"Yeah, had a thing with Aoi's dad way back when. I mean, you know... magi. Can't get _enough _of that fine, enchanted beefcake. Mmmmmmm," Rider said.

"So... wait, does that mean you slept with your daughter's husband?" Sakura asked.

"_Totally not my main concern here, Sakura!_"

"Hush, Nee-san, I'm trying to work out the depths of the psychotic depravity we've discovered here. It's needed to preserve what little remains of my sanity," Sakura said softly.

"Oh, go on then," Rin said sadly. "I... I think it's too late for me. I'mma go and bathe my brain in acid for awhile, catch you guys later."

"That sounds very unhealthy," Rider noted.

"… I really don't want to hear that from you."

"Your choice." Rider sounded far, far too cheerful for the topic of discussion. "Go enjoy your acid bath!"

Rin whimpered, but took the moment to slip away, probably to collapse onto a nearby bed and curl up in the fetal position. Shirou, sensing a shift in the atmosphere, cautiously poked his head in again from the kitchen. "I'm—"

_"Not now, Senpai."  
_  
Shirou disappeared back into the kitchen.

A sudden, horrible thought occurred to Sakura at the sight of her boyfriend. "Rider. Please tell me you aren't _Senpai's _mother." That would mean she was having unprotected sex with her half brother. Sakura may have been exposed to some twisted things, but the thought of a child produced by sibling incest was a bit much even for her.

The silence was very long.

A touch too long.

_"Rider."  
_  
"I would suggest not looking very far back into his family tree," Rider said delicately.

"That isn't an answer."

"I honestly don't know! I mean, I _could _be, but seriously, I had so much rum that night that I don't even know how I was able to keep standing. But if I'm not his mother, I _may _be Kiritsugu's. I was _really _drunk, and that man looked fine, let me tell you. And I have a weakness for magi—"

_"Yes I get it."  
_  
"You asked."

Sakura couldn't even argue about that. Finally, she sighed and rubbed her eyes. "Well, at the very least you only definitely know about me, Nee-san, and… that… one time with the man in outer space."

"Who was a wizard!"

"Right." That wasn't too bad, at least. A little _nauseating_, but not exactly bad—

"That's only staying focused on this universe, though," Rider murmured, adjusting her glasses and picking up her book again in a way that indicated that she thought the conversation was over, and had somehow ended in her favor.

"… This universe."

"Well, of course! Our universe isn't the only one out there, Sakura! Do you _really _think I was only going to limit myself to the men and the alcohol our universe and time travel provided me with?"

"How did you... when did you...?"

"... Well, you ever hear of Zelretch?" Rider asked. "Well, he and I used to have a thing..."

"_Oh God!" _Rin could be heard screaming in horrified nausea from the room down the hall where she had chosen to collapse. Apparently, she should have gone further.

"So, he and I were... doing some stuff that I'm guessing Rin doesn't wanna hear about. And he's_wasted,_so he offers to send me on a multiversal grand tour. And I'm thinking this is just a great idea, because..."

"You were also wasted?"

"Hey, how'd you know?"

"Lucky guess. Go on."

"So anyway, I spent a few billion years going around the omniversal timestream, seeing parallel worlds, living it up, that sorta thing."

"... ... ... Billion years."

"Well, time goes differently in those alternate universes, and of course I was going through time too!"

"Of... of course."

"So yeah, it was a few billion years. From your perspective, I was gone... I think maybe two hours."

"... wait, I was around you to have a perspective? When did all this _happen_?!"

"Um... last month when we went to visit Rin in England? I remember, because I got into a bottle of schnapps, and then waited in the closet to have sex with Zelretch on top of her desk after she got out of class," Rider said. From a distance, there was a sound not unlike Rin vomiting and sobbing at the same time.

Sakura just... stared, for a bit. "Rider, I'm going to ask you a question, and please tell me the answer as accurately as you can."

"Shoot."

"Ex... exactly how _many _drunken flings have you _had,_and how many illegitimate children have you abandoned?"

"... Well, I mean, in both cases you eventually just stop counting, so..."

"I was afraid of that, yes," Sakura said, rubbing her temples to fight off the migraine.

Shirou poked his head out of the kitchen. "You girls having fun out here?"

"Rider is a timeline-hopping multiversal deadbeat mom," Sakura said flatly.

"... Did Rin leave? Because I made dinner for four, so if she's gone we're gonna have extra."

"_Still not the time, Senpai." _

"Sorry." As Shirou slipped away again he could be heard muttering "Jeez, next time she can make dinner and slave over it, see how much she likes it…"

Sakura decided to ignore her boyfriend and his sass, for the moment. She had bigger things to worry about, like the sudden revelation that her Servant was the world's most deadbeat mom.

"So… let me get this straight." She didn't even know why she was still trying to bother keeping track of all of this, but she liked making the effort. It helped her think that she still had some of her sanity intact. "You have traveled to other planets."

"Yes."

"You've… time traveled."

"Yep! Shocking how much a man is willing to let you do when all you want is alcohol and sex."

"Very shocking. You've…. You've traveled the multiverse."

"I think I may have gender bent myself a few times, too… so I might even be a father!"

"… Not touching that with a ten foot pole." Sakura was noticeably paler than she'd been before that sentence had been uttered.

"Hey, I like women too, I could have—"

_"Not touching that with a ten foot po- _no, ew, just occurred to me that could be innuendo. Let's stick to 'shut up or I'll break your knees'_."  
_  
Rider took the hint and shut up.

Sakura took a deep breath and composed herself. "My point," she said at last, "is you… basically may have mothered the entire multiverse as we know it."

"… I _may _have been Eve."

"Oh _dammit_, Rider."

"The multiverse had to start with humanity! And I do remember drunkenly stumbling into this _really_weird looking garden once and meeting this really ripped, naked dude. And hey, I was already drunk, he apparently was alone and a little lonely…"

_"I didn't ask!"  
_  
"Well, I thought it was an interesting tidbit," Rider said.

"You... I don't know _what _I think anymore. You... you might be the most horrible person I have ever met, and I've met my _family_," Sakura said.

"Hey, I came back for you! I try to take care of most of my little rugrats once I sober up," Rider said. "And I think I do a good job!"

There was a flash of black-violet light, and a young girl who looked basically identical to a ten-year-old version of Rider was standing in the corner of the room. "Hello. If the records we dug up are accurate, one of you ditched me on the planet Midchilda ten years ago? The clerk's report only said, 'Purple-haired babe from Earth with a rockin' bod'. He was not a good clerk. Anyway, I'm Lutecia, and whichever of you is 'Rider', AKA 'Ride-her', AKA 'Bar-room Blitzkrieg', AKA 'Violet-hot Lovin', AKA 'Sex Tornado', I'm your daughter."

"... I _mostly _do a good job," Rider said, a bit less enthusiastically.

"Sex Tornado?" Sakura asked.

"Hey, I didn't get to choose my own nicknames!" Rider said defensively.

"I don't care what you call yourself. I care about the whole 'ditched me' thing," Lutecia said. "I have some mommy issues. I worked through them because I was under the impression my mother was taken from me against her will. If she was not I shall be _very _upset. 'Summon a killer insect the size of a building' upset."

Rider stood, looking very somberly into Lutecia's eyes. "I... have to go."

She turned, running for the window, and leapt through it before leaping onto her Pegasus and flying off.

Lutecia blinked. "Was that..."

"It was," Sakura said.

"Then you are..."

"Welcome to the family, 'little sis'. It's actually pretty horrible," Sakura said. "If you want to wait here, she'll probably be back eventually. You can kill her then."

"I... suppose."

Shirou poked his head back out of the kitchen. The look in his eyes was almost hopeful. "Would_you _like some dinner?"

Lutecia blinked, then gave a small, uncertain smile. "Dinner sounds lovely."

_"FINALLY!" _Shirou cheered.

* * *

The situation was, to put it bluntly, going to all hell.

Yuriko was, as her husband so often put it, a fine woman. She was also a very _smart _woman, being one of the main reasons the Takagi family had accumulated its massive wealth over the years. She didn't need to be smart, however, to see that the situation wasn't in their favor. The power was down, and zombies were flooding through the downed gate with no end in sight.

Indeed, the only comfort in the situation was that her daughter and her friends had managed to escape. Yuriko didn't let herself think about the possibility of Saya dying after this.

She grimaced, reloading her gun. It wasn't a bad way to die, and if worst came to worst she would save her last bullet—

"Oh, my. You're in a bit of trouble, hm?"

Yuriko jolted, suddenly very aware of the presence standing almost magically between her and her husband. She looked over her shoulder, and her eyes widened. "Mom?!"

Rider smiled, her lilac eyes observing the chaos and killing. It was not, in fact, a very nice smile. "Hi, honey! I needed a place to hide out for awhile, troubles at home, but... well, things don't look good here, either. Zombies, hm? How… unoriginal."

"M-Mom, when did you… how did…"

"Instinct." Rider slid off her glasses. "Where is my granddaughter?"

"Saya? She… she escaped…"

"We'll find her once I'm finished here. Is that okay?"

"… Okay," Yuriko said, stepping aside and lowering her gun as, with seemingly no effort, Rider stepped into the horde and began to rip them limb from limb.

"Who _is _that?" her husband whispered.

Yuriko sighed. "My mother."


End file.
